NBC isn't just cashing in on the ad dollars from the Olympics and the upcoming Super Bowl — it's cashing in on all the free publicity big numbers get from the media. Back when it sold $1 billion worth of Olympics television time, the trade press fell over itself to trumpet the numbers as the Second Coming. (We were right there with 'em.) Then NBC sold a few more measly million dollars worth of ad time, and again everybody was quick to cheer them on once more. And it's happening again. Now that NBC has the Super Bowl, it's hiked the 30-second fees, from the $2.7 million Fox charged last year to a cool $3 million for the 2009 games. And according to the trade press, NBC is selling spots like gangbusters! AdAge was first on the scene, and today the Wall Street Journal reports Anheuser-Busch and PepsiCo are taking a crack at blowing their ad budgets, while General Motors won't be, and FedEx is still making up its mind. But it's less about the enormous fees — at $3 million, advertisers will spend $100,000 per second — than the industry-wide jumping up and down for NBC's ad sales department. Yes, it's pretty amazing to see network television gobble up huge chunks of media spends on single sporting events, especially in this economic climate. But we've said it before and we'll say it again: For every million bucks NBC hauls in to its coffers, it earns a good chuck of publicity on top of that, gratis. Perhaps, though, it's deserved?